Learning to Read and Write

A girl reading, yesterday.

I was really bad at English in my school days – I just wasn’t interested. We read a lot of books and did comprehension tests, I hated it. We read and wrote about Shakespeare. I couldn’t understand the funny way he worded things, “why don’t they talk properly?!” I would protest to my English teacher. She was a middle aged Scottish woman (she’s dead now) who was quite possibly the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. She had brown sideshow bob hair on top of a long but chubby sunbed wrinkled body. She always wore a grey suit and her teeth seemed to defy gravity, protruding towards you at 90 degrees from her gums. She wore bright red lipstick which would always end up smudged onto her cantilevered teeth. Despite her appearance, she was very likeable and had a vicious sense of humour. I recall her frequently roasting misbehaving students with a tirade of slurred Scottish gibberish – “Rrrrrrrrroy, will ye sshtop that the nuuuu before ah cum over there and sshmack ya!” In hindsight, she was probably an alcoholic. A Scottish alco, teaching English in Northern Ireland. There’s a joke in there somewhere.

There was only one book that I clearly remember reading and enjoying whilst I was at school; George Orwell – Animal Farm. As a 13 year old lad I remember reading that and thinking, this all sounds a bit mad, imagine living in a world run by pigs. Yet here I am as an adult abounded by madness.

I dropped English as soon as I could, at 16 years of age whilst attaining the minimum possible grade to pass GCSE level and progress to A-Levels. Then I did proper, practical subjects – Maths, Physics and Business before proceeding to University to study Engineering where I got much better grades.

I never looked back and was never much of a reader, never mind a writer. Yet here I am, on a Saturday afternoon, instead of being outside talking to girls, choosing to write about reading and writing.

So what changed?

I started talking to girls, lots of them. After talking to these girls in the street who didn’t know me from Adam, at 30 years of age I realised I was missing something. I wasn’t interesting, I didn’t have a story to tell. Since starting pick-up that has changed somewhat. I’ve travelled to more countries, met more good friends, got rid of bad friends, read more good books and had sex with many beautiful (and one or two not so beautiful) women in some crazy situations. When you do things like this you soon find that you have a story to tell, you become interesting.

As I’ve made my way down this garden path of pick-up I’ve been inspired by many modern casanovas – in chronological order – Neil Strauss, Mystery, Daygame.com, Tom Torero and Nick Krauser. He recommended one book that I am currently reading…

Stephen King – On writing

I’m only one third of the way through the book but I don’t want it to end. He has a unique style of writing – short sentences – lots of hyphens – short chapters and he uses brackets (which I thought was frowned upon in the writing community). So far he’s told his story from childhood to a 26 year old father of two who just closed his first major book deal for Carrie. Whilst telling his story he drops nuggets of gold;

Good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere… Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognise them when they show up.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Get rid of all unnecessary words.

It’s a great book so far and I highly recommend it. Another good one is…

I’m four fifths of the way through and it’s my second time reading it after being a test reader. I’ll post a full review when I’m done, but it’s good. It’s taking me a long time to read as it is quite technical and doesn’t flow like a novel. As with daygame mastery, it’s designed as a reference book, keep it on your shelf, introspect on your experiences with girls and then consult uncle Nick. He’s probably the most original, in-depth thinker of our time when it comes to game, finding new concepts and explaining the nuances like no-one else can. This is a not so tedious link to another book I’m reading…

Carl Jung – Modern Man in Search of a Soul

I went into a bookshop here in Melbourne and asked the shop owner if he had a book called The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious after listening to Jordan Peterson wax lyrical about how great it was. The shop owner didn’t have it, instead he had this much shorter book. It’s been on my bedside locker for almost 3 months, it’s only 250 pages long but I still find myself a mere 97 pages in. So far he’s explained how he thinks that dream-analysis is key to understanding the subconscious, how it’s important to consider all opinions (Freud and Adler) and approaches when it comes to analysing neuroses, how no-one really knows how the brain works and that there is a whole new sector of science to be explored – he’s named it the collective unconscious. It’s quite heavy reading for a psychology layman such as myself.

As mentioned, amongst all this reading I’m doing some writing. I find it easy to bash out blog posts (especially when I get laid) explaining what’s happened in my journey. What I find more difficult is the how it happened. After some encouragement I have started this process and am roughly 8,000 words into a daygame memoir…

Everyone loves an origin story.

At this rate, I’ll reach my 80,000 word target by February 2019. I’m struggling to hit a flow state, when I’ve written something I find myself frequently deleting hundreds of words at a time. It’s my first attempt at a book and I’m attempting to make it perfect, reading about how to write then writing about writing but not actually writing. Talking to girls is a walk in the park compared to this writing stuff, which reminds me, I have to go and get ready for date 2 with this girl.

Hopefully the next blog post will be tomorrow, and I’ll be telling you about another notch, that’s much easier.

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Published by roywalkerdaygame

I am not Roy Walker. I don't look like him, I'm 44 years younger than him but I do sound like him as we hail from the same land. This is not a tribute to Roy Walker. I am using his name solely to maintain anonymity.
Roy hosted an 80's TV show called Catchphrase (it's still going now but has a new presenter).
On this show contestants try to guess well known catch phrases or sayings from animated picture puzzles. In an effort to assist the contestants Roy Would say "Say what you see!" In his Norn Irish accent. I think of Roy every time I approach a woman. Not in a sexual way.
When I am approaching these women I am typically on the street, during the day, sober. I am a daygamer.
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